Since its inception, the GEF has invested in improving the management of 3, protected areas covering an area of about million ha, an area larger than Brazil. The GEF-7 strategy prioritizes the development and implementation of comprehensive, system-level financing solutions.
Thus, individual GEF projects must be part of a larger sustainable finance plan and context, and countries may require a sequence of GEF project support over a number of GEF phases to achieve financial sustainability. GEF-supported interventions will use tools and revenue mechanisms that are responsive to specific country situations e.
GEF will also encourage national policy reform and incentives to engage the private sector concessions, private reserves, etc. Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: consequences for conservation and monitoring. Dornelas, M. Assemblage time series reveal biodiversity change but not systematic loss. Roxburgh, S. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis: patch dynamics and mechanisms of species coexistence.
Ecology 85 , — Hiley, J. Impacts of habitat change and protected areas on alpha and beta diversity of Mexican birds. Diversity Distrib. Eklund, J. Contrasting spatial and temporal trends of protected area effectiveness in mitigating deforestation in Madagascar. Rutt, C. Avian ecological succession in the Amazon: a long-term case study following experimental deforestation. Bruner, A. Effectiveness of parks in protecting tropical biodiversity.
Giakoumi, S. Assessing the effects of marine protected areas on biological invasions: a global review. Hallmann, C. More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. Craigie, I. Beaudrot, L. Standardized assessment of biodiversity trends in tropical forest protected areas: the end is not in sight. PLoS Biol. Watson, J. The performance and potential of protected areas.
Nature , 67—73 Butchart, S. Shortfalls and solutions for meeting national and global conservation area targets. Kroner, R. The uncertain future of protected lands and waters.
ADS Google Scholar. Barnes, M. Prevent perverse outcomes from global protected area policy. Visconti, P. Protected area targets post Maxwell, S. Area-based conservation in the 21st century.
Olson, D. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on earth: a new global map of terrestrial ecoregions provides an innovative tool for conserving biodiversity. BioScience 51 , — National Geophysical Data Center.
National Geophysical Data Center, Zabel, F. Global agricultural land resources—a high resolution suitability evaluation and its perspectives until under climate change conditions. Weiss, D. A global map of travel time to cities to assess inequalities in accessibility in Hansen, M. High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change.
Simard, M. Mapping forest canopy height globally with spaceborne lidar. Global terrestrial human footprint maps for and Data 3 , Bird Species Distribution Maps of the World. Version 7. Dickinson, J. Citizen science as an ecological research tool: challenges and benefits. Johnston, A. Estimates of observer expertise improve species distributions from citizen science data. Methods Ecol. Kelling, S.
Can observation skills of citizen scientists be estimated using species accumulation curves? Wood, S. Fast stable restricted maximum likelihood and marginal likelihood estimation of semiparametric generalized linear models: estimation of semiparametric generalized linear models.
Download references. We are grateful to the numerous observers who contributed records to eBird, and to the eBird team at Cornell Lab of Ornithology for creating and managing this database. CEFE, Univ. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar.
Correspondence to Victor Cazalis. Peer review information Nature Communications thanks Uri Roll and Richard Schuster for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available. Reprints and Permissions. Effectiveness of protected areas in conserving tropical forest birds.
Nat Commun 11, That tract of forest, located on the Rio Nanay about 30 km southwest of the city of Iquitos, contained species of trees, with a total count of trees 10 cm or more in diameter, and with a standing merchantable timber volume of 94 m 3. Moreover, some additional sustainable revenues could be realized from the periodic harvesting of wildlife, medicinal plants and other minor products. Environmental services from protected areas Protected areas also can provide valuable services to local communities.
These include soil regeneration, nutrient cycling, pollination, recreation, provision of pure water discussed further below , continued evolution of genetic resources and maintenance of the functioning ecosystem which yields harvestable resources. Such benefits are often difficult to quantify, and even local people may take them for granted. But conserving these processes cannot be divorced from conserving the individual species that make up natural ecosystems.
Environmental services do not normally appear in national accounting systems, but they may far outweigh direct values when they are computed.
These values tend to reflect the value of biological diversity to society locally or at large rather than to individuals or corporate entities. For example, in Sabah recent studies suggest that high densities of wild birds in commercial Albizia plantations limit the abundance of caterpillars that would otherwise defoliate the trees; the birds require natural forest for nesting Fitter , but the function the birds perform is assigned no value in either national accounting systems or in calculations of the environmental cost of clearing the forest.
Although wild products have been harvested by people for thousands of years, the increasing population and changing social and political structures of today have removed most traditional controls on how those resources are harvested. If sustainable benefits are to be provided to local communities, more effective controls may be required to ensure that wildlife populations are maintained at productive levels. The means of doing this will vary from place to place, but the foundations must be built on sound economic and ecological principles.
Establishing well-managed protected areas may provide new approaches to resource management based on sustainable use, thereby restoring at least part of the balance that has enabled rural populations to survive.
At the same time, community involvement does not mean opening protected areas to all comers, any more than a banker would seek customers by opening the vault. Rather, a wise protected-area manager, like a wise banker, uses the assets of a park as a base upon which to build customer satisfaction, investment and interest.
The challenge is to seek the right balance. People can reasonably be expected to institute their own conservation measures when they are the primary decision-makers and beneficiaries. Numerous examples can be cited from various parts of the world Stone ; West and Brechin ; Birckhead et al.
A few illustrations may be helpful. Actions implemented by the local people to control exploitation include prohibition of the use of nets and lances in the oxbow lakes of the reserve during low-water seasons, limitations on fishing technology, prohibition of commercial fisheries and prohibition of the use of fish poisons.
Fish populations in the area appear to be rebuilding and the local communities are directly benefiting from their self-imposed management programmes. Each wildlife management area has a Wildlife Management Committee with representatives from local communities as well as from government resource-management agencies. These committees have instituted measures such as establishing royalties for the taking of deer, duck and fish by outsiders; hunting restrictions such as forbidding all but traditional hunting methods, the use of shotguns and the use of dogs; prohibiting the collection of crocodile eggs; fishing restrictions such as forbidding the use of commercially manufactured nets, hurricane lamps and fish poisons; and restrictions on logging.
In all areas, the rules enacted tend to promote traditional practices and authority. Traditional agriculture is generally permitted. These examples support the general point that earning the support of local agricultural communities means giving them a real stake in the success of a well-managed protected area.
Building such support from agricultural communities can be built on a foundation of water, genetic resources and the conservation of traditional farming systems. Protected areas, water and agriculture One of the most important ecological services provided by protected areas, especially in view of the major investments in water resource management in much of the developing world, is the stabilizing of hydrological functions. Natural vegetational cover on watersheds regulates and stabilizes water runoff.
Deep penetration by tree roots or other vegetation makes the soil more permeable to rainwater so that runoff is slower and more uniform than on cleared land. As a consequence, streams in forested regions continue to flow in dry weather and floods are minimized in rainy weather.
It has been shown that in Malaysia the peak runoff per unit area of forested watersheds is about half that of rubber or oil palm plantations, whereas the low flows are roughly double Daniel and Kulasingham Watershed protection has helped justify many valuable reserves which otherwise might not have been established, so irrigation and energy agencies have the potential to make powerful allies for protected areas that protect watersheds McNeely The challenge is to ensure that such benefits actually reach the local communities.
Good soil protection by natural vegetational cover and litter can preserve the productive capacity of the protected area, prevent dangerous landslides, safeguard riverbanks and prevent the destruction of fisheries by siltation. Thus, protected areas can contribute significantly to the longevity of downstream reservoirs and irrigation systems.
Outside the park, villagers have cleared and grazed the north bank of the Rapti River which forms the park boundary so intensively that it is the subject of rapid erosion. Within the park, on the south bank, the protected vegetation binds the soil so that when monsoon rains swell the river it is only the north bank that is washed away. As a result, the course of the river is shifting. In a period of less than a decade roughly ha was taken from villagers and added to the park by natural forces.
Protected areas support agriculture especially through the protection of watersheds, providing protection against floods, reducing erosion and improving groundwater supplies. However, this function is very complex and relatively few data are available to support any particular conclusion. Bosch and Hewlett reviewed 94 catchment experiments in temperate countries, concluding that deforestation generally resulted in increased water yield from the basin while reforestation resulted in decreased water yield, though reforested areas show less seasonal variation.
Groundwater levels within catchments also generally appeared to rise after deforestation and then to decline gradually to prelogging conditions as reforestation proceeds. Underground water supplies are increasing threatened by seepage from contaminated land, farm slurry and chemicals from agriculture and industry.
The latest NRA proposal includes up to protection zones, some covering several thousand hectares. In such zones, chemical stores, intensive livestock rearing, storage of farm waste and the use of chemicals would be banned. This is an approach to protection that is somewhat less than a protected area, but considerably more than business as usual.
What farmers lose in grazing land and waste dumps will be well repaid in improved water quality, again demonstrating the complementarity between agriculture and protected areas. Protected areas as reservoirs of genetic resources Many protected areas are sources of agricultural products and useful genetic resources.
Many tropical forests may also be sources of new genetic materials for commercial crops or biological controls, though relatively little research has been done on this topic.
One of just a handful of places in North America where wild relatives of chili peppers grow naturally, it is the focus of the first proposed government-sponsored in situ conservation plan for wild native crops.
Apart from peppers, the reserve is home to four other important wild species of native crops: tepary beans, cotton, squashes and the tequila plant.
These have traditionally been gathered by the local Tohono O'Odham people. As recently as 70 years ago, the Tohono O'Odham cultivated ha farms in Arizona without having to pump groundwater, an impossible dream for most farms in the State today. Hence the subjects of biodiversity and biocontrol are linked. At any site, the specificity of natural enemies will make them at least as diverse as the pests they attack. Diversity is probably depressed in agro-ecosystems due to cropping practices which excluded some important natural enemies such as fungi and ants.
Natural vegetation around crops is important to conserve natural enemy diversity, and possibly more so in tropical than in temperate systems.
At present, the diversity of natural enemies is exploited on a global scale in the search for new biological pesticides and exotic natural enemies to control introduced pests.
Demand for both will increase, and source areas for these natural enemies need to be conserved, as many of them are threatened by habitat destruction Waage Overall, more than one-third of all agricultural production is still lost to pests, the same proportion as a century ago.
New genetically engineered crops that contain insecticidal toxins will soon be available commercially, but the utility of such transgenic crops will be short-lived if insects quickly adapt to the toxins. But the time taken for resistance to appear can be significantly lengthened if fresh supplies of susceptible individuals keep appearing, each generation, in treated regions. May suggests that these susceptible individuals could come from untreated refugia - protected areas - deliberately established to conserve susceptibility.
Geneflow from such refugia can greatly lengthen the time before resistance becomes a problem. These populations can often be extremely important, such as the location in India which supported the population of the wild rice Oryza nivara that is the only known source of resistance to grassy stunt virus. Wild populations of rice which are salt-tolerant could help adapt to saline soils or brackish irrigation water, and long-stemmed populations of floating rice may help adapt to the deeper waters that may come with rising sea levels.
Natural areas important for wild relatives of domestic plants or animals, or for protecting wild populations of insects useful in integrated pest control, should be established and managed by agriculture ministries for ensuring that all wild relatives of domestic plants are conserved as a basis for adapting to the changes which are certain to come. Modern technology is also enhancing the potential contributions that wild relatives of livestock can make to human society.
The techniques of embryo transplants, embryo splitting and artificial insemination are now sufficiently well developed to enable wild relatives to make a significant contribution to the livestock industry.
Because embryos are free of many diseases, they can be shipped between nations without expensive quarantine precautions, and cryopreservation methods enable cells to be sent by air in small insulated containers at little expense.
Other techniques, particularly genetic engineering, are becoming available to release the full potential of some of the wild relatives of livestock. The ability to introduce new genes into the germline of an animal and thereby produce proteins outside their normal environment has significantly improved both daily weight gain and feed efficiency, but has also led to a higher incidence of gastric ulcers, arthritis, dermatitis and renal disease.
Genes from wild relatives may provide the raw material for dealing more effectively with such genetic engineering challenges McNeely The wild relatives of sheep and goats can make very significant contributions to human welfare. They tend to have much leaner meat than their domestic cousins, a higher proportion of edible protein of liveweight and higher percentages of usable protein in their meat. Further, many of the wild forms have extremely valuable characteristics, such as marked sexual dimorphism; with larger males and smaller females, less biomass of breeding females needs to be maintained on the annual forage which is often severely limited in winter while still maintaining the ability to produce productive offspring.
All of the wild cattle are important to the livestock industry. Most of them may have crossbred with domestic cattle at some time in history; cattle-banteng crosses are common in Indonesia the famous Madura cattle are such hybrids , and the Mithun of Burma is thought to be a cross between gaur and domestic cattle. Most of the wild bovids can develop large, muscular bodies while grazing and browsing on vegetation that would not support cattle.
Most of the wild relatives of domestic animals are rare or endangered pigs and chickens are exceptions , and their continued survival depends on protected areas. The same holds true for wild relatives of our domesticated crops. Protected areas to conserve traditional farming systems and techniques Each agricultural village is part of an ecosystem.
This ecosystem varies widely from the broad expanses of river deltas where year-round irrigation is possible, to areas where seasonally irrigated fields are interspersed among forests, to areas where rainfed crops dominate. Legumes, medicinal plants, other cereals, tubers, tree crops, livestock, wild animals such as pigs, monkeys and rats and fish all play important roles in most agricultural villages, so agricultural development projects need to consider all these factors.
Further, each agricultural community has ecological relationships far beyond the village. For example, Sattaur points out that in the hills of Nepal, each hectare of farmland needs 3. Many Nepalese forests are ecologically sensitive, requiring expert management if they are to continue providing benefits in terms of fodder, firewood, construction materials, fruit and medicinal plants.
GPAP will measure progress towards the attainment of biodiversity conservation targets in the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, especially the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 , where national governments have committed to establishing protected area systems that are ecologically representative and that conserve areas that are important for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, that are well-connected, effectively and equitably managed, and integrated into the wider landscape and seascape.
IUCN WCPA has for many years championed the cause of enhancing management effectiveness, and has been supported in this endeavour by decisions of the CBD where national governments have agreed to undertake management effectiveness assessments as a routine component of their national assessment and reporting systems.
Management effectiveness assessments measure the extent to which all of the necessary systems and processes are taking place in protected areas, and identify areas for improvement.
There remains, however, a need for an international standard that would attest to the success of protected areas in meeting their objectives, including their biodiversity, social and economic objectives. No protected area system could be established or managed without the participation and involvement of people.
In this programme area, there will be a focus on two main themes. Firstly, the programme will work towards much greater implementation of issues regarding protected area governance , including the assessment and recognition of the variety of governance types for protected area systems, and the diversity and quality of governance at the system and site levels.
These embrace the full suite of protected areas conserved by governments, by indigenous peoples and local communities, by private actors and many cases where these are combined as shared governance, including through multiple agency governance at the landscape scale and transboundary governance across the boundaries of sovereign states.
0コメント